Isaac Webb
Film Department Chair
Isaac Webb is a screenwriter and director from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who earned his baccalaureate degree at Northwestern University.

Isaac most recently wrote and directed FIRST BORN a psychological thriller starring Elisabeth Shue, Steven Mackintosh, and Blair Brown. The film centers on a woman who struggles with postpartum psychosis. First Born is produced by Graham King’s Initial Entertainment Group (Gangs of New York and The Departed) and is being distributed by First Look Films International.

Isaac is Co-Director of DESIRE, a documentary project that follows the lives of six teenage girls from New Orleans through four years of high school. Desire was aired on PBS. Funders include the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Isaac was chosen as one of eight filmmakers selected for the Sundance 2000 Writer and Director labs for his feature length sreenplay, BLACKBOTTOM.

Isaac has produced, written and directed several short films that have been recognized by such festivals as the Chicago Film Festival, the Louisiana Video Shorts Festival, and the San Francisco Film Festival. Of special note was THE WEDDING, which aired nationally on Encore, Bravo, BET and Showtime. He has also written scripts for HBONYC and Universal Studios.

Among the numerous individual awards and grants that Isaac has received are the Rockefeller Fellowship, a Kodak Spirit Award, The New Orleans Film Festival Lumiere Award, and a Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist Fellowship. Isaac has been featured in Filmmaker’s Magazine 25 People to Watch and is a member of both the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America.



Ira Abrams
Moving Pictures instructor
Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Social Relations/Social Anthropology from Harvard University and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently a faculty member at the Idyllwild Arts Academy where he teaches in the Moving Pictures Department, along with serving as Institutional Director of ScriptEd Only Screenwriting Conservatory, a distance learning screenwriting program. Ira is a member of the Producers Guild of America and serves as President, Board of Directors of CineStory, a national non-profit screenwriter’s organization. He has been a Visiting Professor of Film and Television at Chapman University, Chair and Professor, Department of Film and Video at Columbia College in Chicago, IL, Associate Professor of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas, Austin and a visiting faculty member at the Instituto Tecnologico, Monterrey, Mexico, the International Film and Television Workshops, Oaxaca, Mexico and Rockport, Maine, and the University of Manchester, England. As a professional filmmaker, Ira is president of Xaibe Productions, Inc. which produces series for broadcast and educational use. He has been a series producer for Chicago Tomorrow, WTTW Public Television, Chicago and executive producer for many educational and documentary films and television productions.